Things are looking up in DR Congo’s Virunga Mountains, where recently scores of elephants have been returning across the border following a reduction in militia violence.
Also this spring, there have been 9 healthy births recorded among the mountain gorillas, including rare twins which a ranger officer called “a very encouraging sign.”
On the elephants, there was once thousands of African bush elephants that roamed freely between Virunga National Park in Congo and Queen Elizabeth National Park in Uganda.
But since mountains, jungles, and borderlands are some of the most commonly-utilized areas for violent rebel groups around the world, and since Virunga consists of all three, the area has suffered from DR Congo’s decades-long violent insurgency which poached the elephants to sustain themselves.
In recent years, however, 480 elephants from the Ugandan side have been documented traveling back into Virunga, bringing with them the natural ecosystem engineering that only the world’s largest terrestrial animal can do.
“For years I haven’t seen any animals when I flew over this area—just rebels,” said Anthony Caere, a Belgian anti-poaching helicopter pilot at Virunga National Park.
“Now not only are we seeing the elephants, which is an unbelievable sight from above, but we’re noticing the impact of such a big herd on the park. They’re restoring everything back to what it was 50 years ago and doing so much faster than we could have imagined. If the elephants continue to stay here in these numbers, this place will look totally different in just a few years.”
In particular, the elephants’ massive bulk and massive appetites are cutting trails through the forest, scything back invasive shrubs, and expanding clearings. The area is beginning to look like a “forested savannah” again, and there have been sightings of buffalo, Ugandan kob, warthogs, topi, and even a pair of lions.
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Virunga is the oldest national park on the continent, and plays host to extraordinary biodiversity. Receiving millions in aid money from Re:Wild, Global Wildlife Conservation, the EU, and other organizations including from a fund established by Hollywood A-lister Leonardo DiCaprio, it has been able to successfully scale back poaching and implement development programs to try and steer impoverished locals away from illegal agriculture, poaching, or militia life.
It’s not only elephants that have benefitted from this stability, but the area’s famous mountain gorillas. A female in the largest gorilla family group in the park, the 59-member-strong Bageni family, was recently observed to have given birth to twins, who are now two months old.
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Jacques Katutu, head of gorilla monitoring, said they are developing well, and that their mother is managing the demands of two babies, which is uncommon among gorillas.
“The five births recorded since the start of 2026, including twins in the Bageni family, are a very encouraging sign,” Mr. Katutu said in a statement. “Behind every confirmed birth is the patient and dedicated work of our community trackers. Present in the field every day, often under challenging conditions, they are the first to witness these extraordinary moments.”
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